An Investigation Towards the Transformation of the Concept of the Object/Body From the 17th Century to the 20th Century

This thesis investigates the transformation of the concept of the object/body between the 17th and the 20th century, by examining respectively René Descartes', John Locke's, George Berkeley's, David Hume's, Immanuel Kant's, Edmund Husserl's, Martin Heidegger's and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophies along with their interpretation of, broadly speaking, what experience, perception and knowledge stands for and is made possible. While disclosing the meaning of the object, it also addresses the dichotomies brought forward or eliminated through the conception of the object. Every chapter consists of a single philosopher and their selected work(s) which aims to bring about a clear understanding in regard to the issue that concerns this thesis. Progressing from one philosopher to another, there are chapters that address the transition and the transformation between them. If phenomenology is to be taken as a method of investigation, this thesis tries to argue that there has been a shift from epistemology to ontology from the 17th century to the 20th century, which seeks to accomplish giving a description of the brute human experience and the intertwined relation in/through the world, which challenges the modernist interpretations of the concept of the object that designates the object/body merely as an extended being or as a constitution of the mind, while determining the ground on the distinction between the mind and the body in which the mind is made prior.